Lay Down My Heart
by Erin C
Summary: His eyes are shards of blood-red glass - sharp, cold, inert. Thanks to thecert/certs up for the beta!


"You'll have to do better than that, Tobi!" A feral light shone in Atori's eyes as he let out a series of energy blasts that the newest Dragon Knight barely managed to dodge. Kosagi felt herself wince as Tobi tripped and caught himself just quickly enough to spring out of the way of Atori's next vicious volley. Atori was as close to Tobi as he was to anyone, but even with him he gave no quarter.

The combatants circled each other around what Kuina had long ago dubbed the Arena, the cavernous space deep inside the Dragon's Lair where the Dragon Knights sparred to prepare for the next incursion from Shangri-la, but in the last hour Tobi had not once been able to take the offensive. Kosagi didn't disagree with Kuina's reasoning for these sessions - no matter how much theory he understood, Tobi needed to be able to pull his weight in battle - but it always made her feel faintly sick to watch Atori's blank, mad eyes home in on his friend's position like a hawk's as Tobi scrambled to get out of range.

Kosagi watched the other Knights out of the corner of her eye. Kuina stood with his arms crossed, lips compressed in disapproval, while Uzura shouted out occasional encouragement to Tobi as if this were no more than a tennis match. Isuka, hard to read at the best of times, kept his face carefully blank, but his huge hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as he watched. Beyond him, Fukurou shook his head.

Sitting at Fukurou's side, Karasu took in the spectacle with no emotion whatsoever in his eyes. They were shards of blood-red glass - sharp, cold, inert.

For more than a year he had been like this. That wasn't counting the months after Haruka's sacrifice when he had been alternately useless in battle and a furious storm that carved through the faceships' shields as though they were soap bubbles. A spark of anger flared and died in Kosagi's chest, snuffed out before it could take hold.

It wasn't that she didn't understand. Except where she couldn't.

Unlike almost everyone Kosagi trained with now, Karasu had known Haruka since before he was Karasu - since before he'd known Fukurou, even. They had circled each other like a double star, with light that shone only for each other but still managed to warm everyone in their presence. Seeing them together had always made Kosagi's heart ache for her lost classmate Aoki-sempai, who she had spent months for combing the underground slums, longer even than she'd searched for her father. Again and again she'd told herself how foolish it was to pin her hopes on the boy who had tutored her in English and lost to her in tennis, who she sometimes fancied had smiled more broadly at her than at anyone else, who she hadn't even confessed to yet when Shangri-la invaded - but she hadn't stopped searching. Sometimes on patrol she still found herself scanning the tired, broken-down faces of La'Cryma for that smile. She couldn't remember when she had last been called by her given name, Mayaka. If Aoki-sempai could see her now, would he still jokingly call her Maya-chan when nobody was around to hear?

Everything Kosagi had felt for him, all the dreams that had lit her heart up brighter than _isaribi_ in summer, faded like a burnt match next to what passed between Haruka and Karasu in a glance.

When Haruka still lived, it would never have so much as occurred to her to love Karasu. But perhaps a seed had been planted even then.

A scream - not just a shout, but a _scream_ - from Tobi snapped Kosagi's head back around. Tobi had collapsed, the concrete floor visible through a perfect semicircle taken out of his right thigh. Isuka was already vaulting over the railing and lumbering to Tobi's side.

"Should we get a medic?" Fukurou called to Kuina, who stood at the railing watching with gritted teeth as Atori circled in toward Tobi and Isuka, cackling.

"It's under control," Kuina snapped, and in fact it seemed to be - Atori had crouched down to join Isuka in summoning the necessary _reizu_ to regenerate Tobi's leg.

Uzura and Kuina joined the others in the center of the Arena, and Fukurou bent down to say something to Karasu, who nodded and stood. With the brutal practice session finished, the arena would be free, and she crossed over to them with her heart pounding like a schoolgirl's. _Slow down,_ she told it, but since when did that ever help?

"Since that's done, do either of you want to spar?" she asked in as no-nonsense a manner as she could manage. Fukurou cocked his head at her, and then his mouth stretched wide in a smile made lopsided by his scar.

"Well, personally I'd like to get some shut-eye," he said, "but I think Karasu could use the extra practice." He elbowed Karasu in the arm, snapping him to attention and drawing a dirty look. It was as much expression as Kosagi had seen on his face in a week.

"Fine," Karasu said, and finally met her eyes. There was no more feeling in them now than there ever was when he looked at her, but it was something, anyway.

* * *

><p>"Nice maneuver!" Kosagi cried as her arrowlike bolt of light, purposely drained of most of its power but none of its range or speed, collided with the far wall in a shower of sparks. Karasu was unbelievably slippery, sliding out from under her aim with speed she couldn't hope to match. If he ever turned that speed back on her, she would be hard-pressed to escape it, but all he would do was run.<p>

Time to change that.

Kosagi swiveled into the wide arc of his flight and unleashed a rising flurry of energy bolts, each rising higher than the last to catch him as rose to coast over them. Somehow, still, he managed to slide through against the ceiling to land behind her. In the time it took her to spin around, Karasu could have used his spin weapon to knock her down or pull her feet out from under her, but no blow ever came.

Suddenly furious, Kosagi leapt toward the ceiling and released a spray of bolts almost at random - it couldn't do worse than she'd already managed. There he was, running against the western wall. She fired and missed _again_, and swore.

"Fight, damn you!" She let herself descend so that she hovered in the center of the arena with her arms outspread, and she glared down at him, or at whatever edge of black she could glimpse out of the corner of her eye. "Are you a warrior or not?"

Black tendrils shot up at her and yanked her ankles together with an electric lash that drew her down _hard_. Kosagi's back slammed into the ground, and she still lay blinking through a field of flashing lights when Karasu's face came into view, for once not quite made of stone, though she couldn't have said what she saw in it. Automatically, her arm came up, spin weapon charging, and he took a step back - and then stopped, something flinty in his eyes. He spread out his arms and glared down at her with his chin thrust out, deliberately taunting her as she had him. At this range her weapon could do more than send him to the medics, and for a moment she wanted to. God, she wanted to.

"Maybe you're not a warrior either," he said, letting his arms fall.

Anger flared inside her like the white hot blaze of her arrow bolts - and dwindled just as quickly. Her arm trembled with effort, and horribly, she felt a sob rising in her throat. Letting the charge die, she fell back, defeated, and screwed her eyes shut so the tears wouldn't fall too.

"Kosagi." His voice wasn't precisely gentle, but it was quiet. Once she was sure she had swallowed the tears back down, Kosagi opened her eyes. Karasu was still there, standing closer than he had been a moment ago. The fierceness she so admired in him had faded from his face, leaving it merely tired and sad. "I'm sorry," he said.

He held out a hand, and Kosagi regarded it, and him. If it had been Fukurou or Isuka who tried to help her up, she would have slapped it aside without thinking. (And Fukurou, at least, would have smirked and made a show of how much it hurt.) But this was Karasu.

She sat up and reached for him, and his fingers wrapped around hers. It was a strong grip, warm and firm. She wasn't sure she would ever stop feeling it.

As Karasu pulled her to her feet, the watch siren began to wail.

"Well, I guess it's good that we've been practicing," Kosagi said, with an attempt at a smile.

* * *

><p>Kosagi stared, real fear twisting her guts, as a fourth faceship emerged from behind the three that drifted through the frame of the Ouroborous and fanned slowly outward. Squadrons of Dragon Soldiers still poured onto the surface through the portals. No wonder all the Knights been deployed, even Tobi, who still moved as though he hurt.<p>

"Are you all right?" she asked him, and he gave her a pained smile before following Atori into the air. Beyond them, Kuina was directing Karasu and Fukurou's movements. Where Isuka and Uzura had gone to, she didn't know.

His laughter raining down on them like laser fire, Atori had the shields of the two nearest ships down as fast as he had ever managed it, and Kosagi threw herself into the slow, inexorable path of the first to take out its deadly pupils before it could destroy a second squadron. It took her only three bolts to shatter its eyes, and then the ship was down - collapsing, deflating, snapping into nothingness as if it were a toy balloon instead of part of the fleet that had reduced the world's surface to rubble.

The second ship, which already loomed too large and too close, veered toward her.

Kosagi tried to flee, but the drifting movement that had moments ago seemed slow, almost lazy, was overtaking her, swallowing her in its shadow. Though she must have been approaching her top speed, she might as well have been a minnow trying to outrace a whale. The grinding reverberations and sheer presence of the thing drowned out all other sensation, and she suddenly realized that she could die right now, crushed by the pulses of an alien ship. The terror that followed the thought was chased by a strange calm that filled her out to her fingertips.

She wasn't going to make it easier on Shangri-la than it had to be.

Time to stop running. Her spin weapon already charging, Kosagi spun around toward the looming monstrosity and locked in on its right eye. Before she could let loose the charge, something slammed into her side with an impact that whited out everything.

The ground beneath her back was rough and broken. When she blinked her eyes open, quantum particles rained down like points of blue fire. Above her, Karasu tore the faceship apart from the inside, black coils straining as monstrous faces contorted, screamed and died.

With trembling limbs, Kosagi rose to her feet. Some yards away, Karasu's landing raised a thunderous boom and a cloud of dust. His eyes met hers across the ruin.

"That was you," she said, and despite the noise of the battlefield, she knew he heard her. "You saved me."

Karasu turned to rejoin the battle.

Kosagi swallowed, not having realized until now that she held one hand clenched to her chest. She took a deep breath, shook the dust out of her cloak, and followed him into the sky.

* * *

><p>Back in the Dragon's Lair, the Amamiku hadn't sent medics beyond the ones dispatched to retrieve Atori. Perhaps they were too busy with casualties among the Dragon Soldiers to bother with the other Dragon Knights, who had for the most part returned whole and could take care of their injuries themselves.<p>

Whole or not, Kosagi felt like she'd been hit by a bus. Wearily, she watched Isuka work on Tobi in the corner and got up to see if he needed help.

Isuka was receiving help from Tobi himself, who sat hunched over his own leg, concentrating on the wound at least as hard as his friend. As she studied them silently, Kosagi was impressed in spite of herself by Tobi's precision in manipulating quantum matter; outside of battle, it almost equaled his skill with the _reizu_ simulator.

"You really went for it out there," Kosagi told Tobi as he sat up, while Isuka heaved a sigh and wiped his forehead. She wasn't used to giving encouragement, but it was only the truth. "It surprises me after the beating you took from Atori."

Tobi scratched his head with a wry smile. "I tried to remember that the capabilities we've been given make us far less vulnerable that we were as Dragon Soldiers. There was no point in being afraid." He sighed. "I suppose it's a matter of synthesizing information quickly enough. Concentrate on the task at hand. Leave everything else behind."

Kosagi was still turning Tobi's words over in her mind as she walked stiffly through the halls of the Dragon's Lair - until she passed the chamber that held the _reizu_ simulator and caught sight of the figure inside.

Karasu.

It wasn't, of course, the first time she had seen him there with her - his visits would have been hard to miss. It was, however, the first time she had stopped to watch. He sat curled against the liquid-filled cylinder that was Haruka's final resting place like a child seeking shelter, his arms propped on his knees, his temple leaning against the glass. His ragged silver hair obscured most of his face, but Kosagi thought his lips were moving.

She hurried past, frustration mounting inside her. She knew what he had lost. But between the cataclysm and its aftermath, there was nobody in this building who hadn't lost just as much. It was no excuse to stop living.

Kosagi stopped and looked over her shoulder at the entrance she had passed by. She should get out of here before he emerged to return to his quarters.

No. Time to stop running.

It wasn't long, maybe five minutes. Karasu's head jerked up at the sight of her standing there, and they studied each other for a long moment. At first Kosagi feared that he would be angry at the violation of his privacy, but all she saw in his face was exhaustion.

His arm was bleeding. Not _reizu_, but bad enough.

"You didn't even heal yourself first?" Kosagi asked, fixing him with a hard stare, and he shrugged.

"It'll heal, with or without my help."

She shook her head. "Come with me." He stiffened as she took him by his uninjured arm and steered him down the hallway, but he did not protest.

Inside a small examination room, Karasu sat on a cot as Kosagi stood at his shoulder, winding gauze around his upper arm. "Why did you knock me out of the way?" she asked him. "I could have taken its eyes." Resentment and gratitude still warred inside her at the memory.

"You could have been killed."

"And you couldn't have? That's the risk we all take." Kosagi shook her head. "The destruction of Shangri-la's forces is our first priority."

"Dragon Knights aren't so easily replaceable. _You're_ not so easily replaceable, Kosagi." Her hands froze, heat creeping up her neck, and Karasu turned his face aside, lips twisting wryly. "You're more of a Knight than I'll ever be."

For a heartbeat the statement struck her speechless. "That's ridiculous!" she said. "You might be the strongest of us except for Kuina. Just last week you -"

"I'm no Knight. I've just learned to act like one," he said, staring at his hands and forearms, the tattoos that masked his spin weapon. "I couldn't even -" His words went breathless and thin, and his teeth closed on them with an audible click, tendons standing out in his jaw.

"Stop it!" Kosagi cried, and flung her arms around him from behind, not caring how stiff he went beneath her touch. "I know what you're going to say. Just. Stop."

Except for their breathing, the room was utterly silent, but the muscles of his back trembled against her.

"Haruka died to save our world. What would she say if she saw you like this? Just letting yourself bleed like it was nothing? You save others, but you can't even save yourself!"

It was the silence before thunder rolls. Karasu's knuckles were clenched so tightly they were white. Kosagi leaned her forehead into his hair.

"I don't want you to die like I almost did," she said, a sob lodging in her throat.

"Kosagi..." He sounded stunned. His hand came up to touch hers, and something inside her broke. She pulled back, took him by the shoulders, and kissed him full on the mouth. His lips moved under hers, but she couldn't tell whether or not he returned the kiss. When she pulled back, his face was the picture of shock, but he was breathing harder, too. It had to have been a long time for him, if nothing else, and for her it had been forever. She kissed him again, and again, and when his arms came up to pull her down next to him, her heart almost crumbled for joy.

Getting Karasu out of his uniform was fumbling and awkward, and getting out of her own left Kosagi feeling, well, naked, but he lay back on the cot for her willingly enough. Her fingers shook as they moved over his body, more so when she was rewarded by the sight of his eyes fluttering shut, or his throat working. But when he slid a hand up over her breast, drawing a soft sound from her throat, his attention seemed to be as much on his hand as on her.

"It's all right, Yuu," she said, using the name she'd heard Haruka call him once, and the ripple of emotion that crossed his face was almost frightening. He sat up abruptly, nearly throwing her off him.

"Don't," he grated. "Don't call me that." His hand cupped her face, and he kissed her roughly, with a desperation she'd never expected to feel from him, but it thrilled her to the bone as he tipped her back and pressed her down into the cot.

There was pain, but there was pleasure, too, a sharp ragged pleasure that brought tears to Kosagi's eyes even as she became aware that something wasn't right. Karasu wouldn't meet her eyes, not when she rained kisses down his neck and shoulder, not even when she reached up to tip his face toward her. Something like panic rose up her throat.

"Karasu," she said between pants as he bent his head over her with a shuddering breath. His hand came up to smooth back the hairs that had come loose from her ponytail. Emboldened by the gesture, her hands slid further down his back, and he bucked inside her with soft, hurt sounds that left her no breath for any words at all.

"Ha," he panted - except that it wasn't a pant but a syllable, Kosagi realized, her heart stuttering with sudden sick conviction. Her movements froze, all her limbs made of ice, and it took Karasu no more than a moment to go just as still. Their eyes met as he pushed up on his arms, and he didn't even need to say the rest of the name, because it was all there, naked in his blood-red eyes, even as his lower body trembled against her with effort and need.

Kosagi didn't know she could have Karasu inside her and feel this wretched, like some parasitic creature writhing beneath a woman's skin. At least a parasite wouldn't have dreamed itself a woman in truth. She suddenly and fervently wished she was Haruka, with the joy that had lit her eyes and smile and every step. If she had been, she could smile and hold him and everything would be all right.

She would know what it felt like, to be loved like that.

Instead, she was Kosagi, and she lay frozen as Karasu finished and sagged against her with a groan.

"I'm sorry," he said breathlessly into her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Kosagi." Hearing her own name from him now was just another wound. His fingers slipped between her legs, and instead of telling him no, that was enough, her thighs parted for him farther. His touch was gentle but clumsy, but then, it wasn't _for_ her. She still came hard against his fingers, sobbing into his shoulder with release and anger - at him, at Haruka, and most of all at herself.

They held onto each other for some moments afterward almost in spite of themselves. The worst thing about it was the knowledge that if she could, she would have him again. Even like this. She would clasp him to her until the flesh fell from their bones. It was that thought that finally spurred her to roll aside. She tried not to look at him, but he was incapable of not drawing her eye as he slid from the cot. Shame crept around the edges of his stone mask as he stood, naked, uncertain, a slight wounded hunch in his stance, and what right did he have to that? She shut her eyes so she wouldn't have to see him, or anything else, and they stayed shut until she heard him leave the room.

Kosagi clutched her knees to her chest and silently wept.

* * *

><p>Days later, Kosagi passed the entrance to the <em>reizu<em> simulator, and Karasu was there again, leaning into the glass.

She made herself keep walking without a second glance.


End file.
